


Dead, Not Sleeping

by aspermoth



Category: Atop the Fourth Wall
Genre: Gen, Hallucinations, Horror, Insanity, Paranoia, Scott Ciencin's Silent Hill, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-27
Updated: 2011-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-28 06:40:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/304872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aspermoth/pseuds/aspermoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s only a Scott Ciencin Silent Hill comic. What’s the worst that could happen if Linkara reviewed it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead, Not Sleeping

Finding it is a complete accident. Linkara is just flicking through the comic books on his shelf when he notices one he hasn’t seen before: a trade paperback copy of a Scott Ciencin Silent Hill series called _Silent Hill: Dead/Alive_. He pulls it off the shelf, the cover smooth and cool – almost cold – beneath his fingertips.

Did somebody donate this thing? He can’t remember unpacking it, and he’s pretty sure he didn’t buy it.

Oh well. He shrugs and opens the book, flicking quickly through the pages to get an idea of the quality, and oh _wow_ , these five issues are _garbage_. They even bring back _Christabella_. It will be _perfect_ for his annual October horror month.

Oh sure, last time he reviewed a Scott Ciencin Silent Hill series, the town invaded his house and he was nearly killed by two Pyramid Heads, but he dealt with them just fine, didn’t he? He triumphed. And his fans still love those reviews.

This time around, he’ll be prepared for anything Silent Hill can throw at him, right? And anyway, these comics are hardly "Silent Hill" in the first place. He’ll be fine. After all, what’s the worst that can possibly happen?

*

They were there a minute ago. He knows that they were. Harvey Finevoice and Iron Liz were _right there_. They _were_. He _knows_ they were...

But... now they’re not. They vanished, like a ghost, like a dream, like they were never there to begin with.

Then again, maybe they weren’t.

 _Is there something wrong with me?_

The chair is empty. The room is empty. He’s alone. Where does he go from here? Where can he go from here? He’s seeing things that aren’t there. He’s seeing people that aren’t there.

There’s something cold inside him, a twisting cold, like snakes writhing in his gut, and a heaviness, like a lead weight crushing him from the inside out, like he’s done something to deserve this. He chose this comic. It’s his fault. He did it. He carries the guilt.

Wait, guilt? What guilt?

 _What is wrong with me?_

No. No. There is nothing wrong. He did nothing wrong. He’s fine. It’s just Silent Hill trying to mess with his head again. It’s just like last year. All he has to do is finish the series and it will be over. Everything is fine.

 _There is nothing wrong with me. I’m_ fine _._

*

Linkara is not fine. It’s been four days since he started the review and things are no better.

The delusions, the... hallucinations, are following him. Wherever he goes, they go too.

For example, he’s buying groceries at the store: suddenly, Harvey Finevoice appears in front of him, shaking his head in disgust, and Linkara yelps with surprise only to find that now, there’s nobody there, and people are staring at him as though he’s crazy.

Maybe he is crazy. He’s not entirely sure any more.

 _I’m not crazy: it’s just Silent Hill. Just finish the comics and everything will be fine._

There are other things too, though. The cold twisting fear and the heavy leaden guilt aren’t going away. They’re always there, always making themselves known. They’re telling him that he did something terrible, something unforgiveable, but he doesn’t know what.

He never believed in reincarnation before, but now he’s starting to wonder. What if he did something before? What if he did something in a previous life, something he is now being punished for?

But that’s nonsense. It’s completely crazy.

 _And I’m not crazy: it’s just Silent Hill._

"It’s just Silent Hill". He keeps saying that: it’s not helping.

*

It’s time to review issues three and four of _Silent Hill: Dead/Alive_. Linkara knows this. It’s clear. He’s sitting on the futon, he has the book, and the camera is all set up.

He glances down at the book. Where did it come from? It wasn’t in any donation box that he could remember, and he definitely would not have willingly bought something this bad. It had to be the cause. It _had_ to be. All of this started with the book.

And he doesn’t even know where it came from.

 _I’m losing it._

"I am not insane," he whispers to himself. "I am _not_ insane. I am _not_ insane!"

He has to believe it. He has to believe that this is somebody trying to trick him, or Silent Hill trying to get him: it’s something from the _outside_ trying to get _in_.

Just to be safe, he fetches the Green Dragon Dagger. When he returns to the futon, Mechakara is standing by the wall watching him.

The hallucinations are getting worse. Oh God.

"I’m not talking to you."

He sits back down on the futon, staring pointedly at the dagger, examining it.

The camera starts.

"I am _not_ insane."

*

Wednesday. Things are worse. Worse Wednesday. Heh – he loves alliteration.

His repertoire of hallucinations is expanding exponentially. Now he has Mechakara and the Nostalgia Critic to follow him around and call him a murderer. He hasn’t left the house in two days. He can’t take the staring when he’s reacting to things that they can’t see or that don’t exist.

Silent Hill keeps trying to take him. The sirens and fog aren’t as frequent as the hallucinations, but the intervals between them are less regular. He’s constantly on the alert for those harsh mechanical wails and the encroaching fog. Constantly.

The flashes of pain are even more infrequent, but they are worst of all. They feel like his head is being crushed and expanded at the same time, pressing inwards and outwards until his skull shatters, and at the same time, flashes of images, horrible things, burning onto his consciousness.

 _Memories of who you were before and what you did to her._

The images stay with him long after the pain has passed, lingering, bring with them a sick sense of déjà vu, making the weight of guilt heavier.

He did this to himself. It’s all his fault.

 _I’m innocent._

*

Friday is when something miraculous happens, something he had feared would never happen again. He has just blown away the fogs for the fifth time that day when the doorbell rings, something that hasn’t happened since he started the review.

And when he opens the door, he finds Iron Liz and Harvey Finevoice on the doorstep.

"Hey Linkara," says Liz (why is she sounding so friendly?). "We haven’t seen you in almost two weeks. Is everything okay?"

She can’t be real. This must be fake. Just another hallucination. His words are stuck in his throat and he can’t think what to say.

"Hey kid, you alright?" Harvey asks.

 _Why aren’t you calling me a murderer?_

He reaches out a tentative hand towards Liz, towards her face. If she’s just another one of his delusions, she’ll disappear before he touches her. That was what happened when he tried to cut the illusionary Mechakara. That was what happened when he finally lost patience and tried to "I Am A Man" punch an imaginary Nostalgia Critic. She’ll disappear just like the others.

But she doesn’t disappear. She stays. And his fingertips touch the warm skin on her cheek.

"Oh my God – you’re _real_."

*

Saturday night, almost midnight, and Linkara hasn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. It’s the sirens. Every time he tries to relax, to sleep, the sirens start wailing again and he has to force himself awake and blow away the fog. It nearly caught him last night. It came early, just after he dropped off, and when he tried to blow the fog away, the batteries in the fan had died. He only just replaced them in time. So now he won’t sleep. He won’t sleep until the review is done and these sirens are gone and done away with.

 _Like you did away with her._

He can hear laughing. A little girl just... laughing. Like Bear did when he reviewed the first issue. It’s like the laughter is following him, mocking him for his inability to sleep, the near constant sirens, the flashes of horror and pain.

 _Punishing you for what you did to her, you sick bastard._

There’s something he’s forgotten. That’s what this is trying to do: to pull that shattered memory of a life before back into his mind, no matter what damage it causes, while a little girl laughs at his pain.

 _You’re going crazy, Linkara._

*

Sunday. A mix of tiredness – he hasn’t slept since maybe nine-o’clock Friday night – and one those agonising flashes of pain hits him on his way to the kitchen and he collapses in front of Iron Liz – two of them, actually. The fake Liz who tells him that he deserves it and the real Liz who helps him up and over to the futon.

Later, he hears her talking to Harvey Finevoice – the real Harvey – about how worried she is. She thinks that he’s sick. She thinks that he needs a doctor. Harvey agrees.

But there is no doctor in the world that can purge these feelings from him, and Linkara knows that. All he needs to do is finish the review and everything will be back to normal.

 _She’ll still be dead, you monster._

Now he may have lived before and he may have done something terrible but it doesn’t matter because right now he is Linkara and he has a review to finish tomorrow.

He fakes a smile, a cheery demeanour, and hurries the real Liz and Harvey out of the house, telling them to come back soon and that he couldn’t be better.

Even they know he’s lying.

*

It’s Monday, it’s Monday, oh thank _God_ it’s finally Monday and it’s finally time to do the last part of this damn review and get this whole thing _over_ with. He’s so close to being free of this nightmare that he can practically taste it.

He is going to survive this. He is going to make it through with his mind intact and his fans none the wiser because he is Linkara, he is the funny comic book guy, and he is not going insane.

They can’t know how close he is to cracking up completely. He’s got to hide it from them, disguise it with a mask of irritation and frustration so that they don’t know that he’s terrified and hasn’t slept in almost three days. He has to be strong for them.

 _Even though you know you’re weak._

No, he’s not weak. He has to be strong for his fans. He has to be the hero for them.

 _Wait until they find out you’re the villain._

No, he’s not listening to this crap. He’s going to do the review and get away from this and then everything will be better again and he can go back to living.

*

The guilt is like a rock, a lead weight, a physical pain, like half his organs have been ripped out through his belly and scattered before him except that he can’t see them there: all he can see is the little girl that he murdered staring down at him; her eye flashes and his head is being crushed with the weight of the images, the memories, of what he did to her, his own daughter, and the horror fills his senses like a sound, a scent, a taste that burns like acid because he did this, he _chose_ to do this, felt this hatred and horror and disgust for his own child, mutilated her and beat her and broke her and drained her blood; it’s his fault, all his fault (what kind of monster _is_ he?) and he’s been hiding from it for so long, hiding from the guilt and shame and horror of what he did before but he can hide no longer, shattered memories of a life before made whole and hideous and inescapable and he can never make it right and he’s sorry – so _sorry_.

And Linkara lifts the gun to his head and pulls the trigger.

*

Nothing.

He is floating.

It is silent.

Then–

"No."

The word is spoken in a voice that he thinks he almost recognises, a quiet, feminine voice with a soft echo to it. He slowly begins to open his eyes but there is nothing there, only an empty whiteness with no beginning and no end, a bright whiteness so beautiful when compared with the ugly red he’s left behind.

 _Is this death?_

He hears the voice again, so close and yet so far.

"Partner."

Who is that? It sounds like a little girl...

A little girl.

 _The_ little girl.

It’s her soul speaking to him from inside the magic gun. Calling him her partner. But how does that make sense? She was just blaming him for her death...

She speaks again.

" _Friend_."

And that’s when he finally sees it. That’s when he understands everything. He isn’t the villain. He never was.

Linkara is, and always has been, the Big Damned Hero. And if this little girl needs his help to banish that demon, that creature of rage and hate and misery and pain, then by God, he was going to do it.

He’s had enough of this crap.

This ends _now_.

*

It’s over. It’s all over. The colours are normal, the little girl’s dark feelings are vanquished, the nurse demon is gone and the electronic noise – whatever the heck _that_ was – has faded away to nothing. Everything is back to normal and Linkara has _won_.

Then the adrenaline rush fades: a wave of exhaustion stronger than anything he has ever felt before rushes through him, robbing him of all his strength, and his legs give way. He has the mother of all headaches coming on, his arms are shaking and he has never been so desperate for sleep in all his life.

All because of that damn Silent Hill comic.

Then he notices the book, the black tome lying on the carpet. Odd. He thought that that was part of the Silent Hill dark world. He’ll have to get Pollo to look at it later, and to scan the room to find the source of that weird sound. And he’s going to have to explain all this to Iron Liz before she has him committed.

But first, he’s going to sleep until people refer to him as Rip Van Linkara. And never, ever think, "What’s the worst that could happen?" again.


End file.
